Mayor wins praise from LGBT leaders

NEWS

by Matthew S. Bajko

Mayor Ed Lee welcomed Pride Parade grand marshals, city supervisors
and officials, and the general public to the mayor's balcony outside his office
after raising the rainbow flag over the main entrance to City Hall to kick off
Pride Week on Monday, June 18. (Photo: Rick Gerharter)

Six months into his first full term, San Francisco Mayor Ed
Lee is winning praise from LGBT leaders who backed his opponents in last year's
heated mayor's race.

Since his January swearing in ceremony, the affable,
no-nonsense Lee has won plaudits for backfilling $8.1 million in federal cuts
to AIDS programs and naming a number of LGBT people to high-profile government
posts.

His appointees include District 5 Supervisor Christina Olague,
the first out bisexual on the board, and mayoral opponent Bevan Dufty, a gay
former supervisor, as his homelessness policy adviser. After raising alarms
when he did not reaffirm two gay men to the city's health commission, Lee named
HIV-positive transgender leader Cecilia Chung to the oversight panel.

Neither of the board's two gay male supervisors, Scott
Wiener (D8) or David Campos (D9), backed Lee in the mayor's race. Yet both say
they continue to have a good working relationship with him.

"I have been impressed with his willingness to listen
and be responsive to the concerns of different communities. I have found when I
go to him with concerns, he has been very responsive," Campos told the Bay
Area Reporter during a brief interview
Monday, June 18 at the mayor's annual rainbow flag raising ceremony at City
Hall to kick off Pride Week.

The two do not always see eye-to-eye on every issue, said
Campos, but that does not impede their working together.

"You can disagree without being disagreeable," he
said. "I am looking forward to continuing to work with him."

Openly gay city Treasurer Jose Cisneros, who co-chaired
Dufty's mayoral campaign, also told the B.A.R. that he and the mayor have maintained a cordial working relationship
despite his not supporting Lee in the 2011 race.

"I think the mayor is doing a great job," said
Cisneros. "We have always had a good relationship."

Transgender advocates continue to thank Lee for his addressing
last year's Trans March during Pride weekend. It marked the first time a sitting
mayor had spoken at the event; Lee told the B.A.R.
he intends to go to this year's march.

"The significance of that can not be overstated,"
said transgender labor organizer Gabriel Haaland, who has been helping to raise
funds for this year's march.

A vocal supporter of District 11 Supervisor John Avalos for
mayor last year, Haaland said he nonetheless has been repeatedly impressed by
decisions Lee has made in office.

"I don't agree with him on everything. But he has been
a lot more accessible as a mayor," said Haaland. "He has made a lot
of great choices. He is surprising us in all the right ways."

The most oft-heard critique about Lee is that he doesn't
have the same flair and celebrity cachet as did predecessors Gavin Newsom
– who memorably posed for a Vanity Fair photo spread with ex-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle and later married actress
Jennifer Siebel – and Willie Brown, whose media courtship was legendary
and made cameos in such movies as The Princess Diaries
and George of the Jungle
.

"The word boring has been used a number of times,
although I wouldn't use it," said B.A.R. society columnist Donna Sachet when asked what she most often hears
about Lee in LGBT circles. "

The mayor's absence at various LGBT community events is
routinely remarked upon, added Sachet.

"But sometimes you need to be hard-working behind the
scenes to get things done," she said.

Voters were looking for a "common sense" mayor,
and that is what they have gotten in Lee, said Rebecca Prozan, a longtime
lesbian Democratic Party activist.

"I knew Ed Lee was going to be focused on getting
things done," said Prozan, who hopes the mayor will spend more time on
helping the homeless and filling vacant storefronts in neighborhood commercial
corridors.

Probably the most controversial decision Lee has made to
date was suspending Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and seeking his ouster from office
due to his pleading guilty to domestic violence charges. Mirkarimi has
considerable support among progressive LGBT leaders who accuse the mayor of
turning a marital dispute into a political attack.

Yet Haaland told the B.A.R. that the political drama "transcends" the LGBT community and
how it views Lee's handling of his job.

"People will evaluate if he treated the process fairly
or not," he said.

Moving beyond the 2011 campaign

Lee became interim mayor in January 2011 after being picked
by the city's Board of Supervisors to fill out the remainder of his
predecessor's term. Newsom resigned that month to become the state's lieutenant
governor.

At the time Lee pledged not to run for a full four-year
term. But he rescinded that promise last summer and jumped into the race.

While Lee had significant LGBT support, several other
candidates also had major backing from LGBT leaders and groups. Both Avalos and
City Attorney Dennis Herrera secured endorsements from the city's LGBT
Democratic clubs and elected leaders. Dufty also courted key LGBT backers in
the race.

At times during the campaign relations between LGBT
supporters of Lee, Dufty, and Herrera became particularly fraught. Emotions were
enflamed over questions raised about Herrera's legal advice to Newsom in 2004
concerning the city breaking state law to marry same-sex couples.

Infighting emerged within the more moderate Alice B. Toklas
LGBT Democratic Club over its endorsing Herrera over Dufty. And campaign
mailers sent by supporters of both candidates added to the hurt feelings and
generated headlines during the final weeks of the mayor's race.

At a cocktail party June 6 timed to kick off Pride month, a
number of LGBT leaders who did not back Lee in the mayor's race came together
to move beyond the rhetoric of the 2011 campaign.

The mayor was warmly welcomed as he circulated throughout
the Noe Valley home of Sal Giambanco and his husband, Tom Perrault. The couple
backed Dufty for mayor but agreed to host the get-together for LGBT leaders to
meet with the mayor.

"We think he is off to a great job," said
Giambanco, adding that Lee was their second choice in the race. "I think
it is important to be supportive of the mayor and be of service anyway we can.
It is a tough job."

Businessman Bill Hemenger, who hosted a series of forums at
his Diamond Heights home last year for various mayoral candidates to meet with
LGBT voters, said he agrees with "99 percent" of everything Lee has
done as mayor.

"There is not much I would change. Nothing makes the
hairs on the back of my neck rise up," he said of Lee's agenda.

Dufty supporter Kevin Shanahan said that Lee's
administrative approach to the job of mayor has turned out to be a perfect fit.

"We are at a time in the city's history where San
Francisco needs an administrator as mayor and he is fulfilling that role,"
said Shanahan. "The most important challenge the mayor faces is finding a
common ground from the empowered and very vocal neighborhood groups who do not
allow advantageous things to happen in the city."

Wiener, who worked to see his former boss Herrera be elected
mayor, introduced Lee to the assembled crowd. He noted how the mayor has an
open-door policy for meeting with supervisors.

"He is the kind of guy you can go in and talk to him
about important issues," said Wiener, adding that he was struck by how the
mayor reacted to the loss in federal AIDS funds. "I went to see the mayor
and said we need to do something. He didn't blink."

Braced to have Lee restore half of the AIDS funding cut and
leave it up to the supervisors to find the rest, Wiener said he was pleasantly
surprised when the mayor announced he had plugged the entire loss.

"Instead, he didn't play any games. He just did
it," said Wiener.

Joking he didn't come prepared with "any great
speech," Lee told the crowd that he happens to be "very lucky"
to be mayor at a time when the city's finances are improving. He also implied
that he has no intentions to pursue higher office, at least until he is termed
out of the mayor's job in 2020.

"I am not going anywhere. I love this city," said
Lee. "I am going to make it the best I can as long as I occupy Room
200."

His number one priority remains jobs, an issue Lee promised
he is "never going to leave out of my sight."

Talking up his proposal to create a housing trust fund to
build more affordable residential units in the city, Lee said it would
"help aging LGBT seniors get housing."

He also pledged to find ways to assist small business owners
and those couples raising children in San Francisco.

"Whether you are making a family or investing in a
business, I want to make sure the city helps people realize their dream of why
they came to the city," said Lee, who earlier in the day had welcomed
President Barack Obama to town by thanking him for supporting same-sex
marriage.

Former Alice Club co-chair Bentrish Satarzadeh credited Lee
for hearing the LGBT community's pleas to backfill the AIDS cuts and make more
LGBT appointments to city commissions and oversight panels.

"We are hoping to get higher positions than what we
have gotten so far, but it is a good start," she said.

Steven Aronowitz, whose top pick for mayor was Dufty, whom
he once worked for as an aide, also said he has been "really
impressed" with how Lee has handled balancing the city's budget this year.

"His appreciation for the city came across," said
Aronowitz of Lee's remarks at the house party. "He is someone who cares
about what happens to San Francisco, so I was inspired."